A medicine dispensing and packing apparatus or the like includes a medicine supply apparatus for dividing, into small portions, tablets and similar medicines and supplying the divided tablets or such medicines (see, for example, Patent Literature 1).
As illustrated in FIG. 10A, a medicine supply apparatus described in Patent Literature 1 includes an upper tablet cassette 101, a lower tablet cassette 104 located below the upper tablet cassette 101, and a movable plate 107 and a fixed plate 108 located below the lower tablet cassette 104.
The upper tablet cassette 101 includes a plurality of distribution cells 102 arranged in the left-right direction and the depth direction (not shown) of FIG. 10A. The upper tablet cassette 101 includes a shutter 103 that opens and closes lower opening portions of the distribution cells 102.
Further, the lower tablet cassette 104 includes supply cells 105 corresponding to the upper tablet cassette 101. The lower tablet cassette 104 includes tabular bottom plates 106 that respectively open and close lower opening portions of the supply cells 105. The bottom plates 106 are each pivotally movably supported by the lower tablet cassette 104 by means of a shaft. As illustrated in FIG. 10A, the bottom plates 106 are supported from below by the movable plate 107 and the fixed plate 108. With this structure, the bottom plates 106 respectively cover the lower opening portions of the supply cells 105. In this state, tablets can be temporarily housed in the supply cells 105.
An operator who operates the medicine dispensing and packing apparatus or the like, first manually sprinkles tablets in a necessary amount according to a prescription, over the distribution cells 102 of the upper tablet cassette 101. Then, the operator actuates the medicine supply apparatus. Thereby, the shutter 103 of the upper tablet cassette 101 is opened. Consequently, the tablets drop onto the supply cells 105 of the lower tablet cassette 104.
Then, as illustrated in FIG. 10B, the movable plate 107 is moved in the horizontal direction (the right direction of FIG. 10B) with respect to the lower tablet cassette 104. Thereby, the support of each bottom plate 106 from below is cancelled, so that the bottom plate 106 comes into an opened state. Consequently, the tablets drop from the supply cells 105 onto a hopper 109. The dropped tablets are packed for each small portion using packing paper by a dispensing and packing mechanism (not shown).